e-gamete

e-gamete: Digital Procreation Service (2019) is a speculative design project that has been developed as an approach to invite audiences to a future scenario of network-transmitted genetic information and computer-simulated human procreation. The carefully designed future service (an ironic practice of commercialization) allows human reproduction to take place outside of the human body. Audiences are encouraged to contemplate what novel situations might occur within their own futures and to consider broader questions like how family, parenthood, marriage, etc., are redefined and what new social relationships might emerge. This research looks at what happens to human reproduction when human genetic information is digitized. It aims to stimulate audiences in an artistic way to deliberate two key questions: (1) how will biotechnology recondition and recontextualize the natural processes of genetic information (i.e., expression, replication, transmission, and mutation) and our physiological processes (e.g., reproduction)?, and, (2) what might be the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) for using such biotechnology? By employing speculative design as an artistic research tool/tactic to step outside the technical limitations and craft the future service, the project asks vital questions about the future in a provocative and quasi-realistic manner. Thus, the research forms a unique entanglement of sensitive topics by dealing with future biotechnology and human reproduction.